If Google Assistant rules your roost, and you happen to own a robot mop, you may have already made use of the rudimentary voice controls available. Google is now letting developers create Assistant Actions for smart mops, meaning more commands at your disposal.
That means expanding the available commands beyond "Hey Google, tell [Mop] to clean" to more specific orders like pausing, checking the mop's location and getting the status of the current cleaning cycle, as per documentation on Google's developer site spotted by 9to5Google.
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Specifically, it reads: "Interactions with mops may include starting, stopping, pausing cleaning, docking, checking the current cleaning cycle, locating the mop, or adjusting various modes and toggles. Some mops may support cleaning specific zones in the home."
Google is pretty much copying the same functionality that already exists for smart robot vacuums and applying it to mops, a growing category of smart home device. iRobot's new Braava Jet M6, which already supports Assistant, should be one of the first to make use of the new features, but there will be others too.
As for when this will start rolling out, that's down to the manufacturers, but for companies like iRobot that have already built similar integrations for vacuums, it hopefully won't be a big job.
